For several generations a popular story about St. James Church made the rounds of the Hudson River Valley community. One Sunday, an old Republican matriarch member was mortified to find her pews crammed with complete strangers, gawking and waiting for… Read More ›
The Washingtons
First Ladies, Swimsuit Edition: Bikinis to Bonnets to Bloomers
In the beginning, First Ladies were given no dispensation when it came to figuratively swimming in their bathing suits alongside the Presidents. Regardless of their nationally elevated marital status, they were expected to lead their countrywomen by example. So it… Read More ›
The Presidents, Swimsuit Edition: Trunks to Tees to Plain Naked
Roosevelt wore one with a tanktop. Kennedy, Reagan, LBJ, Nixon and Obama sported the more familiar trunk suits. Truman slipped into what almost looks like a 1940s Speedo. John Quincy Adams, among others, wore nothing at all. In most parts… Read More ›
One Tough Mother: George Washington’s Miserable Mom
Long before Mother’s Day became an official holiday, the women who gave birth to us were being held aloft upon the American pop culture pedestal, revered, beloved, honored and practically beatified. Thirteen moms in history, however, had that most rarefied… Read More ›
The Little Rascals & George Washington: A Small Lift in the Great Depression
There they were, big names among Little Rascals: Wheezer, Stymie and Spanky, along with lesser known Sherwood, (third from left), Kendall and Dorothy (second and third from right), clothes pressed and antics still long enough to gaze with well-behaved… Read More ›
Adams Snubs Washington’s Birthday & His Snarky Top 10 List on GW
The second President liked the first President well enough, but he wasn’t all gaga about having The Great One’s birthday celebrated with dance parties, fireworks and parades. In fact, if any one President would surely take fiendish pleasure in knowing… Read More ›
Washington & Monroe: No Love Lost Between the First & Last of the Virginia Dynasty
Except for the one four-year term of New Englander, John Adams, the American Presidency was held by what came to be known as the “Virginia Dynasty,” four Presidents who each, remarkably, were elected to two terms, or eight years each… Read More ›
The first First Lady’s first Day
It only takes 45 minutes to take the shuttle to New York from Washington’s Reagan National Airport, located in Virginia on the Potomac River, but it took eleven days for Martha Washington to make the same distance of a trip… Read More ›
George Washington’s Birthday: He Spent it Dancing
It wasn’t the Twist like Jackie Kennedy loved doing, or the Dougie as Michelle Obama has illustrated. It wasn’t the foxtrot that the very large William Howard Taft moved to like a graceful battleship, nor even the frug as President Lyndon B…. Read More ›
George Washington and his….Camel?!
They told us he had wooden teeth, that he threw a silver dollar across the Delaware River and that he loved cherries (more on that next month). Is George Washington’s myth expanding to make him an animal-lover – beyond his… Read More ›
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